Thursday, 31 January 2013

Deadman's Blood - Product of a Deranged Mind

I guess some of you may be familiar with that
English chap Matt Bass, who runs his youtube review show and also plays in a
couple of metal projects: black metal Witchclan and old school death metal Deadman’s
Blood. With the latter he was announcing the release of a second demo for quite
a while and so finally by the end of 2012 “Product of a Deranged Mind” was
released. Having a guest appearance of three legendary US death metal
musicians, this was not suppose to be just yet another demo, but something more
extraordinary… at least this is how I imagined it to be. The reality is a bit
different, as after listening to the demo I must confess that my anticipation
was bigger and in the end the material turned out to be quite average, but
surely it is good enough to give it few occasional spins once in a while. So,
please don’t get prejudiced right off. But before we talk about the music, I
must ask Matt about something what really annoys me in his approach to his
band. This is something what I meet with quite often nowadays and what really
pisses me off, I mean why someone would actually limit the demo material of his
band? Where are the times, when bands have copied hundreds or even thousands of
copies of their demos and have been sending / trading / selling them to whoever
wanted? Not to forget about sending a necessary quantity to the zines or
labels… Nowadays – and that is also the case with Deadman’s Blood – there are
100 copies or even less and no more. Nothing would be provided for promotion,
nothing for everybody interested… What I noticed that that often it’s sort of
making an artificial cult and elitism, which is equally pathetic and funny as
it is unnecessary. Why so many bands do that nowadays? Maybe Matt can answer me
this? I really see no point. And I’m not even gonna start on the idea of
selling mp3 files of your demo on iTune or wherever, because that is just
beyond my comprehension. For that some underground orthodox maniacs can crucify
Deadman’s Blood straight away hehe! But that is Mat Bass’ idea for his band,
fine, I just totally don’t agree with it, to be honest.

Let’s move forward though and listen to some
metal, shall we? Speaking just about the musical content of “Product of a
Deranged Mind” I can say that I more or less liked what I’ve listened to.
Deadman’s Blood performs old school, archaic death metal, but definitely Matt
has composed some cool riffs and had some good ideas to use for the demo. And
so the first song, “The Knife (Will Cut You Deeper)”, is definitely the most
energetic and fastest track from the whole demo. It is really cool; great
groovy riffing to bang your head, some more melodic parts here and there plus
the infectious, catchy chorus part… All those attributes will make you remember
this track most from all four songs from the demo. I can also say that style
wise it reminds me Bone Gnawer most, but there are also some similarities to
the Swedish death metal and bands like Puteraeon, Entrails, Interment, so
definitely a worthy recommendation. I think this song includes Kam Lee’s guest
vocal contribution, so it’s really cool (he’s also responsible for the artwork
of the demo!). Then the following three songs would focus mainly (but not only)
on slower tempo, with more of that Autopsy worship of rotten, morbid, cryptic
sound and overall atmosphere. “House of Horrors” is standing out here as the
most interesting I guess, but I cannot say there is anything wrong about
“Zombie Creeping Flesh” (is the title influenced by that gory horror movie from
1980???) or “Can’t Escape the Butchery” neither, as both are also solid and
good songs. I like some of these riffs, Brian Werking did excellent job with
his guitar leads and the vocals are just sick!

After listening to “Product of a Deranged Mind”
I would need to point out a couple of things, which I see to be improved next
time; if of corpse I can only suggest anything. The songwriting doesn’t leave
much to be wished for, it is solid and fine, but maybe the songs are slightly too
long and thus they lack a bit of that straight forward attitude. Then the
production of the demo is the matter, which I would need to discuss most. I
mean, the sound is not bad, it is OK, definitely the demo got a good mastering,
but still I sometimes have some slight doubts for that drum machine, also the
guitar sound is sometimes little bit weird. Most of all though, I totally don’t
like the way bass guitar sounds on this demo. I don’t know whether the mixing
fucked it up or what, but it’s one of the very few cases, when the bass guitar sound
has actually been annoying me constantly all the way through listening to the
demo. I actually had to take some bass off my stereo, to make this instrument
less audible and thus less irritating. I’m not sure how should I describe this
sound exactly, so maybe listen to it yourself and try to find the words for it,
for me the production of “Product of a Deranged Mind” is definitely the weakest
point of the demo. There’s too much of that “bedroom band”, mechanical kind of
feeling, with fucked up bass guitar and not enough of plain and simple arse
kicking nuclear energy of killer death metal.

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This blog is first and foremost to remind the UG metal community my work on PANZERFAUST zine, so I'll try to exhume my old interviews and reviews from that zine.

Blog is also an opportunity for me to share my thoughts on new releases, new bands... I'll publish here new reviews or interviews I've written recently, just for the pleasure of doing so and getting these things out of my mind, as I still enjoy writing about the music I love and live.Finally I'll be sharing here any others things I find interesting...